ComScore: Google still serves more users, as CBS enters the Top 10

Two trends continue, as evidenced by this month's comScore Top 50 report, released this afternoon: One, Google's going nowhere but up. Two, it can still go up when overall Internet use in the US is actually going down.

During Yahoo's most recent quarterly report, its executives told investors that the crown jewel of the company continues to be its portal, which serves more users than anyone else's. That's now demonstrably no longer true, as Yahoo's growth has been outpaced by Google for three consecutive comScore surveys.

In comScore's latest report for overall US Internet traffic in July, sites maintained by Google (which include all those Blogger sites, and YouTube) served over 141.5 million American users last month, versus 140.3 million for Yahoo-operated sites. Compare that to comScore's results for last February, when Yahoo sites served about 137 million unique US visitors versus Google's 136 million.

In this business, bragging rights are very valuable, as who tips the scales helps determine who sets the pace for advertising rates. Microsoft sites have actually enjoyed a rather nice gain, from 112 million unique US visitors in February to 120 million in July. No doubt Microsoft's pairing with NBC, which has coverage rights to the Beijing Olympics in the US, has helped brighten its outlook.

But there's another "network," in the 1960s sense of the word, on the horizon. This month, CBS' completed coupling with CNET Networks has catapulted that brand by 27 positions to the #10 spot on the comScore Top 50 properties ranking for the first time, serving nearly 48.2 million unique users in the US.

ComScore estimates the total size of the US Internet audience now at 189,134,000, which actually continues an unusual trend of declining since May, where the audience size was about 190.8 million. Company analysts are blaming the weakening US economy, though that truly does appear to be just a guess.

About 90% of US Internet users are given access to advertising served by AOL's Platform-A, a number which has remained flat since AOL's combination of its new platform with Advertising.com...probably because there's not much more "up" it could possibly go. But here, there's good news for Yahoo: Its reach in July picked up by 2% over June, to 85% of US users.